August 1980

Purchase To Read More

Digital Issue ?Read or download this issue’s articles online. *A printed copy of this issue is not included. $7.99

Print + Digital All Access Subscription ?Read or download this issue’s articles online. Plus, subscribe to get Print, Online and Tablet access to the next 12 new issues to be released as well as Online access to archives back to 1845. $99.00

Features

The Changing Demography of the Central City

Since World War II the suburbs and exurbs of most U.S. cities have grown faster than the cities themselves. Today the decline of population in the central cities is not relative but absolute

By George Sternlieb and James W. Hughes

The Surface of Venus

Shrouded by clouds, it has now been mapped by radar from the earth and from a spacecraft in orbit around Venus. The images suggest a geology intermediate between that of the earth and that of Mars

By Gordon H. Pettengill, Donald B. Campbell and Harold Masursky

Microtubules

They are structural organelles that are found in all nucleated cells. Assembled like scaffolding ftom protein subunits, they participate in cell division, cell movement and the maintenance of cell shape

By Pierre Dustin

The Placenta

This remarkable organ is the intermediary between two different individuals: the fetus and the mother. After delivery it can also serve as an "experimental animal" for a wide variety of studies

By Peter Beaconsfield, George Birdwood and Rebecca Beaconsfield

The Isolated Electron

From a single electron trapped in an artificial atom of macroscopic size a property of the electron called the g factor can be measured with unexcelled accuracy

By David Wineland and Philip Ekstrom

The Antecedents of Civilization in the Indus Valley

One of the three earliest civilizations was that of the Indus. Excavations at Mehrgarh in Pakistan have uncovered farming settlements that flourished in the region 3,000 years earlier

By Jean-François Jarrige and Richard H. Meadow

Disk-Storage Technology

On the surface of a spinning disk the data for a computer are stored as minute magnetic regions. In devices being developed the data will be "written" and "read" by a laser

By Robert M. White

Newton's Apple and Galileo's Dialogue

Newton did see the apple fall, but what was it that inspired him to link the apple's descent to the moon in orbit and arrive at the law of universal gravitation? It may have been a diagram in the "Dialogue"

By Stillman Drake

Departments

50 and 100 Years Ago, August 1980

Science and the Citizen, August 1980

Letters

Letters to the Editors, August 1980

Recommended

Books, August 1980

Mathematical Recreation

Mathematical Games, August 1980

Amateur Scientist

The Amateur Scientist, August 1980

Departments

The Authors, August 1980

Bibliography, August 1980

Purchase To Read More

Digital Issue ?Read or download this issue’s articles online. *A printed copy of this issue is not included. $7.99

Print + Digital All Access Subscription ?Read or download this issue’s articles online. Plus, subscribe to get Print, Online and Tablet access to the next 12 new issues to be released as well as Online access to archives back to 1845. $99.00

Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at www.springernature.com/us). Scientific American maintains a strict policy of editorial independence in reporting developments in science to our readers.